Andrew Rock, a farmer in England, noticed pieces of blue plastic in the biks he fed his pigs in 2018. There were a few in every bag of biks. He set them aside and took pictures of them. At first Andrew thought it was a manufacturing defect, but the supplier assured him it was not. It was simply a product made according to current standards.
His story appeared in The Guardian. As shocking as this news was, it did not lead to any other regulations.
FOOD WASTE WITH PLASTIC
Rock lives next door to a cookie factory. He used to pick up leftover biscuits there that he fed to his pigs. But with the advent of the circular economy, things became organized differently. Not only food producers, but also supermarkets have products that are unsalable, because of, for example, packaging errors or because the expiration date has passed.
In the circular economy, food residues are not waste, but raw materials. All those residual streams come together and are processed into animal feed. The food leftovers from sauces, bread or sweets, are often wrapped in plastic. The plastic has to be separated from the food residues, but the processing entails that pieces of plastic are irrevocably left behind. And thus end up in the animal feed. The percentage may be low, but with the massiveness of plastic packaging, it is a lot of plastic. Andrew was told by his supplier that his cookies contained bread and chocolate bars as well as cookies.
TOLERATED
The Guardian did further research. The UK was still part of the European Union at the time, and Europe prohibits the presence of (remnants of) packaging material in animal feed (EU Regulation 767/2009, Annex III). So how can plastic in biks be legal?
The paper explained that in England a tolerance limit of 0.15% plastic (dry matter weight) is used. This would be a safe limit and other EU countries would also apply this percentage. Indeed, the Netherlands also uses this 0.15% tolerance limit, since 2006. The Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority enforces this and can impose a fine in the event of violation. We do not know whether biscuits with visible plastic exist in the Netherlands.
PIGS ARE ALLOWED TO EAT A PLASTIC BAG EVERY FOUR DAYS
Meanwhile, the BBC had also visited Andrew Rock. Someone calculated that an adult pig of 400 kilos eats 4 kilos a day. Assuming the 0.15% per weight, that pig can legally eat 6 grams of plastic. That's about as much plastic as one plastic bag or one credit card. But pigs weighing 400 kilograms are an exception.
If you take the average slaughter weight of pigs in the Netherlands (almost 100 kilograms) that eat 1 kilogram of feed every day, then these pigs are allowed to eat 1.5 grams of plastic per day. In four days, that pig will have consumed the weight of that plastic bag.
And all this because we firmly believe in the circular economy....
Repost:Plastic Soup Foundation
Earlier we wrote in this blog that plastics have been found in farm animals.